Nokia's Head of Marketing Quits After 15 Years of Service

Nokia can ill afford to lose hired talent at this point as the company tries to reestablish itself as a major player in the handset market, but even so, it will have to forge ahead without Ilari Nurmi, who served as vice president of product marketing. After 15 years of service, Nurmi has left the building.

"I have left Nokia. I am thankful for almost 15y there. I wish Nokia all the best and look forward to getting Lumia 920 once available," Nurmi posted on his Twitter account over the weekend.

Nurmi was spearheading Nokia's smartphone strategy, the one that has the Finnish phone company going all-in with Microsoft's Windows Phone platform. He leaves ahead of the result of Nokia's biggest gamble with so many chips stacked on the Lumia 920, the phone he vowed to purchase when available. Ironically, the lack of a concrete release date for the Lumia 920 when it was unveiled last month was one of the things that put a damper on enthusiasm from investors and analysts

More recently, Nokia's smartphone strategy came under fire when it was learned the Lumia 920 would launch as an exclusive with AT&T on November 2. After all the effort Nokia put into hyping the device, it's yet another big gamble to restrict the Lumia 920 to a single carrier.